Indeed, the industry has actively started to integrate advanced lighting controls as part of the wellness living experience, as illustrated in a recent article published by The Hill, titled “Home intelligence expert says smart home technology will help people maintain wellness”. Although it is exciting to embrace new lighting technology, the bottleneck to successfully achieving this feature is commissioning, making it essential that each design team fully understands the intent and outcomes of the feature while the commissioning team possesses both skill and lighting system flexibility at final tuning to achieve the feature’s objectives.
Understanding the needs of owners and occupants, as well as specifying the proper systems, is critical to the success of this feature. For example, if occupants have great daylight access for most but not all of the time, designated task lamps with tuning and dimming capability may be a more proper—and easier—solution compared to a full ceiling lighting system with data-mining capabilities.
In the WELL v2 pilot, a well-designed electric lighting system can help a project score up to 10 out of 14 optimization points in the Light Concept, whereas good daylighting design can help a project score up to six points. It is not surprising that electric lighting technology is gaining momentum in the WELL v2 pilot because solid-state lighting and smart lighting technologies are playing increasingly important roles in improving people’s lighting experiences, as well as the circadian benefits associated with such lighting technologies.
MORE CONCISE FEATURE STRUCTURE The Light Concept in WELL v1 includes 11 features, four of which are preconditions that are mandatory for WELL certification (Silver) and seven of which are optimizations that can be used to achieve higher certification levels. However, in the WELL v2 pilot, there are only two preconditions and six optimizations (see “WELL Light Overview”, page 45). Although the number of preconditions in the WELL v2 pilot has been reduced and circadian lighting design was changed into an optimization in Feature L03, electric lighting in Feature L01 has remained a precondition, given its importance to human health and wellbeing. One of the reasons may be that the WELL v2 pilot is trying to offer more flexibility to project teams that have technical difficulties achieving circadian lighting with daylight and electric light collectively.
Features in WELL v1 that have been modified in the WELL v2 pilot include the following:
- Low-Glare Workstation Design
- Surface Design
- Daylight Modeling
- Daylight Fenestration
- Light at Night
- Circadian Emulation
Most of these features are regrouped under more concise scopes and consolidated to strengthen other features. For example, in the WELL v2 pilot, two parts of Daylight Modeling are used to strengthen the Glare Control and Enhanced Daylight Access features. The concept of Daylight Fenestration in WELL v1 has been used to diversify both Light Exposure and Education and Enhanced Daylight Access. Explore these changes further and delve into all the WELL concepts and features.
MORE FLEXIBLE PATHWAYS The Light Concept in the WELL v2 pilot offers different tracks for project teams to achieve each feature. And, instead of being standalone features, some features are interconnected, which makes it possible to have synergy between features. This gives project teams more flexibility and incentive to explore a variety of possibilities.
For example, there are more than five different pathways to achieve the two pre-conditions (Feature L01 – Light Exposure and Education and Feature L02 – Visual Lighting Design) in the WELL v2 pilot. Another good example is Circadian Lighting Design (Feature L03): There are four tracks in this feature, covering daylighting and electric lighting design. Among them, two tracks are interconnected with Enhanced Daylight Access (Feature L05). There are more than 10 pathways for project teams to achieve the Circadian Lighting Design Feature in the WELL v2 pilot by combining the five different native tracks in Feature L05. This allows the WELL v2 pilot to be more accessible and achievable to different project types, no matter how the project may be optimized for view management, workstation layout, computational modeling or glare control.
Thrive in the Age of WELL v2
The WELL Building Standard has been reshaping the lighting industry since it was first released. With the launch of the WELL v2 pilot, this initiative will continue gaining momentum by continuing to raise awareness around the importance of lighting design and technologies through a more comprehensive and flexible set of guidelines.
Attend this Presentation at LIGHTFAIR
Shengliang (Daniel) Rong will be co-presenting “Designing Lighting, Daylighting and Controls to Meet the WELL Building Standard,” at LIGHTFAIR International 2019, an annual architectural and commercial lighting trade show and conference. This session will compare Version 1 and Version 2 WELL standards. Features within the Light Concept will be defined while application-specific examples of lighting, daylighting and control designs will illustrate how they may be achieved. LIGHTFAIR is being held May 21-23 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia. Learn more and register.